By John Dempsey, WLS-AM News
(CHICAGO) Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy is denouncing the U.S. Department of Justice report that accused Chicago Police of abusing citizens, and violating their civil rights.
McCarthy told the John and Ray Morning Show on WLS that the report was rushed, highly political, and unfair, and he also accused Attorney General Loretta Lynch of lying when she said her staffers were unable to reach McCarthy for an interview.
“This is United States Attorney General, on a national broadcast, lying. And I just can’t get by that. I’m sorry. I was raised with too much respect.”
McCarthy says he was always available but that no one from Lynch’s department ever made an attempt to contact him. “And the U.S. Attorney General lying on national TV, plus who’s involved with this? The obviously political bend of this, it just really speaks to the report and I don’t think it’s gonna stand up to scrutiny.”
McCarthy did say he found some things in the D.O.J. report that he agrees with. “You know there are some parts in there that are good. You can’t argue with training. You can’t argue with better supervision, you can’t argue with better policy review. And you can’t argue that CPD has one of the most dysfunctional disciplinary systems in the country. I actually identified that in 2012 and I ran headlong into a wall at City Hall trying to get that changed.”
But overall McCarthy was highly critical of a report that he says was biased against police and used anecdotal information from citizens. “They taint with broad brushes. There’s actually a phrase in there that says that CPD doesn’t care about solving murders of black and Latino men. What type of a statement is that? Where do you get that? And the actual investigation appears to be just a collection of people’s stories. And there’s no real investigation into whether it’s factual, there’s not an opposition position that’s provided, it’s just ‘you say this happened, therefore it happened.'”
President Barack Obama’s administration launched the probe in 2015 after a video showed a white officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times. But once President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated this week, his appointees will be in charge, which means there are questions about whether the Federal Government will ever impose discipline on the Chicago Police Department based on the findings of this report.
@ 2017 WLS-AM News
